I Found You (35 page)

She squealed and then laughed as I pressed into her.

This was the first time, man and wife.

She was so beautiful.

“Rach…”

She smiled down at me, letting me lead the movement, holding a little above me, so I could just press up and into her, again and again.

She felt perfect.

The night became a marathon of pleasure.

When she came, leaving her thong moist with her release, I tumbled her onto her back and continued, stripping off all my clothes before I came back into her, but I left her thong on a little longer, until she’d come again.

Once she had, I slid it off and used my tongue to bring her there again.

She was crying out, panting; urging me to stop, and begging me to continue. Laughing, as well as shouting.

After this, I had her lean up against the bedhead, and knelt behind her, nipping her shoulder with my teeth as I thrust in deep. She did have a thing for rough sex, especially when she was in a mood like this.

“Oh.”

“Jason!”

“Oh. Ah. No.”

“Oh no, don’t stop though. I didn’t mean no. Yes.”

“Oh Yes!”

I loved her open expressions during sex. I just loved everything she said and did.

“Jason!”

She came again and I stopped, hanging on to my end by a thread. I didn’t want it yet. Not yet.

I breathed deeply, slowly and then withdrew.

She’d been gripping the bedhead. She turned, smiling at me and then tumbled back on the bed. Her smile, and her eyes, implying she was ready for more.

So was I.

Looping her shins over my forearms I pressed into her again, then moved hard and fast, shoving into her, over and over.

“I love you,” I said.

Her fingers touched my head and ran across my ear. “I love you, too.”

“I can’t believe we’re married. I don’t feel any different.”

Her fingertips touched my lips. “I can’t believe it either, but I feel amazing with you.”

I laughed, then worked with more determination, caressing the places inside her I knew sent her wild.

“Oh, Jason.” Her fingernails dug into my shoulders, and that was an end to conversation.

She cried out with every stroke, panting, while her fingernails clawed at my back.

Thank heavens we’d turned the TV on. But I felt sorry for anyone sleeping beyond our wall. I doubted the TV noise covered ours.

She shattered in a rush, on an impassioned cry.

I followed her over the edge, falling onto and into her physically, and mentally.

I knew I’d found my soul mate, the girl I’d been meant to find.

~

“Jason, wake up. I need to tell you something.”

I blinked and rubbed my eyes. My head was thudding. I’d drunk too much last night.

“Jason,” Rach whispered, her fingers brushing over my chest.

I met her green gaze.

She was kneeling on the covers and sort of leaning over me. She wore the shirt I’d taken off last night. I could smell my aftershave on her.

“Jason,” she whispered again. “You need to listen. I have to tell you. I should have told you yesterday…”

I rose up on my elbows, trying to get my brain out of its beer fog. “Rach, what is it?” I hadn’t a clue what time it was. It was daylight, but I felt exhausted, like I hadn’t hardly slept.

I looked at the clock. Seven a.m. We’d probably only got to sleep about five-thirty.

Confused, I felt my forehead screw up in a frown. I rubbed my eyes again. “What is it, Rach?”

“I tried to tell you at the party, on Christmas Eve, before we went back in, but your cousin came out, and when we were at the lake, before Lindy’s dad came,
and yesterday. But you stopped me yesterday,
Jason
. I have to tell you … ”

She was rambling and upset about something.

I did remember her trying to tell me something yesterday, and me saying it didn’t matter. It obviously mattered to her. “Go on then, Rach, tell me if it makes you feel better?”

Her hand splayed over my stomach, as her eyes looked down at me, bright with intensity. “Jason, I’ve got this thing. I should have said before we got married, but it’s so hard to find the right moment and––”

“Rach.” One of my hands covered hers. “Whatever it is, it’s okay, honey. Just say it.”

“I have bipolar disorder.” The words rushed out of her, like she was saying something momentous, but I’d never heard of whatever it was.

“Bipolar?” I was half asleep still.

She straightened up, her bottom resting back on her heels, and her fingers slipped from beneath my hand, sliding to my hip, resting on top of the sheet.

“Yeah. It’s a condition, a disease, of the mind. It’s… Oh, I don’t know how to describe it. I don’t think straight sometimes, not like other people do. I guess you could say I’m crazy. Officially, it’s a mental illness. My emotions swing, and hit peaks and dips, higher and lower than most people’s. I’m mentally ill. But that doesn’t sound good does it? So I hate saying it. But it’s part of who I am, and… and. You should know. It makes me do stupid stuff and it drags me down sometimes. But I don’t want to be mad. This thing is part of me and who I am, and… I’ve never known just how to deal with it.”

She stopped talking, like she’d run out of air…

I looked at her. I was too tired and hungover to take her words in. “Rach?”

“You don’t get it, do you?”

No, I didn’t. I shook my head. “Sorry, Rach, I’m just tired.”

Tears brimmed in her eyes.

I sat up. This seemed a big deal for her. It probably should be for me, too, but I’d just not taken onboard what she’d said.

I lifted my arm as I rested my back against the headboard.

She fell against me crying.

I stroked her hair.

“Look Rach, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you, honey. I’m just half asleep.”

She sighed and pulled away from me, wiping away her tears.

She looked desolate.

“It’s okay, Rach, it’s not going to change anything.”

“You don’t even know what it is though, do you?”

I shook my head, I didn’t. “But I’ll tell you what, let’s go for a run. That’ll clear my head and wake me up properly, then you can explain it to me again, and I’ll be in a mood to get it, yeah?”

She nodded, and then immediately straightened and got off the bed.

I got up and dressed too. I was feeling strange, like someone had turned a page over in my life. But it was more than a page. Only six weeks ago my life had been entirely different. Since then I’d found Rach, and now she was my wife. A whole
chapter
of my life had ended.
No
. It was even more than that I was writing a completely new story. I felt a wave of awe sweep over me. But it was tainted when I thought of Mom and Dad.

Rach went into the bathroom and I got out my cell.

I rang Mom, but there was no answer. It was probably too early. I thought about leaving a message but I didn’t know what to say. I just hung up.

Rach came back in to the room.

“You ready?” I asked.

She nodded.

Subdued, was the word I’d use for her mood this morning. I felt like she was holding back, waiting for my judgment, like she was preparing to walk into a courtroom for a jail sentence.

I slipped my arm about her waist in the lift, and whispered to her ear. “Rach, honestly, you can explain to me, but it won’t change a thing.”

She looked back and smiled, but it was halfhearted.

We ran as soon as we got outside the hotel. We didn’t talk much, we never did when we ran, but we shared my earphones.

Running was the time when I got my thoughts in order, when I digested stuff, planned and worked out what to do.

I tried to think, but there just seemed an empty space in my head. I’d never heard of this thing she was talking about. Bipolar? I had no idea what it really meant––what it meant to her––and what it meant to us… What I was supposed to do now?

I just kept running and let my mind stay empty awaiting knowledge and understanding.

We ran onto the strip and then along it, past The Luxor Hotel, with its obelisk, and then on past the replica of the Statue of Liberty, and over the bridge by the mock-up of the Eiffel tower, and then all the way up to Caesar’s Palace. Then back.

I felt invigorated, the oxygen in my veins waking me up and clearing my head. But I still sensed fear in Rach as she ran beside me. Whatever bipolar was, she was afraid it would scare me off.

When we neared our hotel, my cell rang.

I was breathing heavily when we stopped running, as I took it from my pocket.

The word
Mom
flashed up on the screen, with her picture.

I looked at Rach as I answered, taking my half of the earphones out. Rach was panting and she bent over, gripping a railing as I spoke.

“Hey, Mom.”

“You’re out of breath.”

“We were running.”

“We?”

“Rach and I.”

“She runs with you regularly then?”

“When she’s not working, yeah.”

“Why did you ring, Jason?”

Dammit, thinking about Rach’s declaration while I was running had made me forget that Mom still didn’t know we were married. “Sorry… I… I rang to tell you something, Mom…”

“What, darling––”

“I’m trying to tell you. We’re in Vegas.”

“Las Vegas?”

“Yeah, and we’re married.”

Mom went silent on me.

I smiled at Rach. She was looking at me with eyes that asked––
what was your mom’s reaction?

I’d say,
horror
.

“Mom?”

“Well… You…
Why?
I can’t believe you did that, Jason…”

“I know, it is great, isn’t it? We can’t believe we did it either.” I kept my pitch light for Rachel’s benefit, and a smile on my face.

“Jason, how could you get married? You––”

“We married in the Graceland Chapel, Elvis led Rach up the aisle.”

“Jason, this isn’t a game, you’ve only known her weeks, and––”

“I know, we’re really excited. We’re flying back to New York today. Can’t wait to share the news with everyone. Will you tell the family?”

“Jason! Don’t be stupid. I take it she’s there.”

“Uh huh, and she’s really happy, Mom, as I am. I hope you’re going to be happy for us. I’m going to go now, okay.”

“Jason! You can’t… This isn’t…”

I lowered the cell from my ear and ended the call, then shrugged at Rach.

“How did she take it?”

I smiled. “Honestly? Not good.”

She sighed, and tears glittered in her eyes.

Our marriage was only one day old and she was down again. “Come on, sweetheart.” I gave her a hug and stroked my hand over her hair. We’d both caught our breath now. “Everything’s going to be okay. In fact it’s going to be more than, okay, it’s going to be great.”

She nodded against my shoulder and pulled away, but I could see in her eyes she didn’t believe me.

I gripped her hand, as we headed back up to the room.

In the privacy up there, I said, sitting on the edge of the bed to listen to her. “Go on then, explain to me…”

She bit her lip, then took a breath. “I don’t know how to explain it to someone who doesn’t know.”

I leaned my elbows on my knees. “Well unless you try, I’m never going to get it, am I?”

She shook her head, her eyes looking at me with uncertainty. Then she went over to the desk, in the corner of our hotel room.

She came back with the free pad and pen they’d left in the room.

“I’ll draw it.”

She drew a circle and inside it drew another. I could tell she was biting her tongue as she did it. “Your emotions are within this circle.” She indicated the inner one, her voice and her eyes telling me how important it was to make me understand. “Mine, or rather people with bipolar, in comparison, our emotions go way out here.” She indicated the outside circle. “I hit extremes.”

She looked up from the paper, at me, meeting my gaze. “Your emotions drift one way or another, and you might feel down one day and up the next for some reason. Mine can swing erratically, I feel like there’s a huge pendulum inside me sometimes. I rocket from being down to being up, manic. And when I’m up, I’m on fire, it’s like nothing can stop me or touch me, everything I do will succeed. I get angry if someone holds me back. I… Well …  When I’m up, it feels great, even when things really aren’t right. I feel elated. Everything’s amazing, even when it isn’t.” She took a breath, then said in a much quieter voice. “Like yesterday… I felt great, yesterday––”

“Rach, you had a good reason to feel good yesterday.”

“I know…” Her voice echoed with frustration. “Listen, Jason. It’s just yesterday I felt like that, but today…. Today there is this me, the one that gets stuck in depression, and then it’s hard to think through the black fog that clouds up my head. Like that day you got angry in the store. Sometimes it creeps up slowly, and sometimes it just hits me.”

She sighed. “I don’t think about consequences sometimes, because I get so caught up in my emotions. I’ve got into debt before, because I can spend without thinking…”

I watched her face, listening, but not really understanding still. But what I could see was that this was something that was hard for her.

She looked right into my eyes. “I’m crazy, Jason, a little or a lot at times. Some people can go really crazy with it, and get delusions, they think they’re God or something, and… It’s not, nothing…” Tears glimmered in hers. I reached out and took her hands.

The paper showing the picture she’d drawn was still gripped in one of them.

“So what does it mean for me, Rach?” I frowned. “What do you want me to do, or not do?”

She sighed and her tears ran over. “Tell me when I do stupid stuff, so I know it. Stop me from making errors of judgment if you can. Like you said to me I was flirting too much in the restaurant… Stay with me…”

I pulled her down to sit on one of my knees, wiped her tears away, and then brushed her hair back over her shoulder as she looked at me, her eyes asking for response.

“Rach, you’re not scaring me off, if that’s what you think. I fell in love with you for who you are. This is you. And I love you.”